Securing Space

Securing Space
CFR.org
Task Force Report No. 82
Securing Space A Plan for U.S. Action
Updated February 2025
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Introduction

Space is a critical strategic domain—just like oceans and airspace. Space assets are vital to modern life, underpinning the United States’ security and prosperity. In the past five years, however, conditions in space have changed drastically, raising new problems that demand new solutions. In an earlier era, space activities were dominated by a few countries implementing government-led programs. But those days are gone.

For one thing, the number of actors has proliferated. Private companies have become the drivers of innovation and activity in space, injecting ingenuity and efficiency into the U.S. government’s space program. Newer companies can execute fixed-price contracts—which do not cover cost increases—faster and for less money than legacy manufacturers, which are accustomed to a cost-plus fee payment model that allows the company to pass cost overruns on to the government agency purchaser.3 The availability of private sector launches has, in turn, opened space to more governments. Over ninety countries now have assets in space providing services or observing Earth (see figure below).4 The list of countries includes China and Russia, both U.S. adversaries. China has launched its own crewed Earth-orbiting space station and landed two uncrewed spacecraft on the far side of the Moon. Russia plans to cooperate with China on the International Lunar Research Station. But friendly countries also see space programs as a mark of great-power status. India, for example, has landed a device near the lunar south pole and has made clear it wants to be included in making decisions regarding use of the Moon. 

As more governments and companies send more objects into space, that realm has become increasingly congested. Since 2018, the number of satellites orbiting in LEO has doubled, fueled by the dramatic expansion in private sector transport and service providers.5 The number of objects launched into space quadrupled from 2019 to 2023.6 The number of objects launched from the United States increased nearly six times in those four years. SpaceX accounts for most of that dramatic expansion, which includes the company’s contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA (see figure below). SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation accounts for some 60 percent of all satellites in space. 

This Task Force Report focuses primarily on LEO, an altitude up to 1,243 miles. Satellites also orbit in medium Earth orbit (MEO), 1,243 miles to 22,236 miles, and geosynchronous orbit (GEO), above 22,236 miles (see figure below).7 However, the launch of megaconstellations and other commercial activities has increased congestion at lower altitudes, hence this report’s focus on LEO. Access to desirable locations within LEO is a limited and increasingly scarce resource. The barriers to entry are low and getting lower as prices drop. According to Thomas G. Roberts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Aerospace Security Project, twenty years ago, the cost of a launch to LEO was $8,100/kg on an Atlas V rocket and $10,400/kg on a Delta IV rocket. In 2010, the Falcon 9 brought that cost down to $2,600/kg.8

Adding to the congestion is the rise in space debris, driven significantly by three recent events. In 2007, an ASAT test that China conducted against one of its own weather satellites created more than three thousand pieces of trackable debris.9 Two years later, Cosmos 2251, an inactive Russian satellite, collided with an Iridium satellite, creating over two thousand pieces of debris.  In November 2021, Russia conducted a direct-ascent ASAT missile test against one of its own satellites, creating thousands of pieces of debris.10 That action even endangered its own citizens, as Russian cosmonauts as well as the U.S. and European astronauts working on the ISS were ordered to shelter in the attached emergency escape vehicles due to the risk of debris collision.11 The increase in congestion and space debris makes those types of collisions more likely. That endangers not just assets such as satellites but also the lives of astronauts (see figure below). As early as 1978, NASA scientist Donald Kessler foresaw that an increasing number of objects in space could cause more collisions, which would create more debris, and hence even more collisions. The cascading “Kessler Effect” would degrade LEO, rendering it uneconomic.

Even as services from space have become more endangered, daily life has increasingly come to depend on them. Billions of people—including farmers growing crops, businesspeople managing inventory, and parents dressing their children for school—rely on weather reports based on information from satellites (see figure below). As of 2021, there were 6.5 billion devices using global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), including the United States’ GPS, Russia’s GLONASS, China’s BeiDou, the European Union’s Galileo, India’s Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System, and Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (see figure below). Moreover, the space economy is only growing. In April 2024, the World Economic Forum projected that the global space economy “will be worth $1.8 trillion by 2035, up from $630 billion in 2023,” expanding at “almost twice the rate of global GDP growth.”12 The space economy encompasses not only satellites and launch vehicles, but other activities such as spacecraft servicing and repair, weather prediction, and Earth imagery analysis.

The international institutions that touch space issues were intended to support the exchange of minimum amounts of basic information among a small number of governments, not to manage a dynamic space economy. During the Cold War, neither the United States nor the Soviet Union wanted such organizations to meddle in their superpower competition. The presumption was that only a handful of governments would have space programs. In the 1960s and 1970s, the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) provided a useful forum for the negotiation of the four major space treaties dealing with outer space principles, rescue and return, liability, and spacecraft registration. Those remain the foundation of space governance. However, as the treaties became more specific and space politics changed, fewer states ratified them. The fifth, known as the 1979 Moon Treaty, has never been adopted by any of the major space powers.13

For the United States, space has been a realm for both scientific exploration and national security competition. Led by NASA, the United States has accomplished a series of extraordinary feats, including being the first country to send human beings to and from the Moon and operating the James Webb Space Telescope to study the history of the universe. In 2019, the United States created a new military service, the Space Force, to enhance national security, bringing together organizations previously located across different branches of the military.

The United States has also expanded its space diplomacy. The Principles for Cooperation in the Civil Exploration and Use of the Moon, Mars, Comets, and Asteroids for Peaceful Purposes, better known as the Artemis Accords, which the first Donald Trump administration initiated in late 2020 with eight signatories, dramatically expanded under the Joe Biden administration. In 2024, more countries joined, bringing the total number of signatories to fifty-two by the end of the year.

Space traffic management is needed to preserve the value of space. “Management” connotes the intentional allocation of assets and resources to implement a strategy. The principal reason for the need for international space traffic management is increasing congestion in LEO. Access to desirable locations within LEO will become a scarce resource. Currently, states assign LEO orbital positions when granting a license to launch, but that is a national process. There is currently no dedicated international mechanism to deconflict overlapping allocations. Unlike geostationary orbit, a type of geosynchronous orbit where satellites in effect orbit over a fixed spot, coordination of locations in LEO is more difficult.

The stakes are high. Russia’s debris-causing ASAT tests and its willingness to challenge norms endanger the peaceful use of space for everyone. China’s emergence as a peer competitor in space makes U.S. strategic planning for this domain more difficult and more urgent. Without immediate changes to how space is governed, the benefits of access to space could be lost to everyone. As the leading spacefaring country and the home base of the most innovative space companies, the United States is uniquely positioned to determine this future.

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